On February 29, 2012, Sandoz Canada announced a disruption to the supply of its many injectable medications in Canada, including vitamin B12 (VB12) while it upgraded operations to meet US Food and Drug Administration standards.1 This disruption forced Canadian physicians and pharmacists to find alternative sources or make therapeutic substitutions until the shortage was resolved. This shortage ...

Boron suboxide B6O, the hardest known oxide, has an Rm crystal structure (α-B6O) that can be described as an oxygen-stuffed structure of α-boron, or, equivalently, as a cubic close packing of B12 icosahedra with two oxygen atoms occupying all octahedral voids in it. Here we show a new ground state of this compound at ambient conditions, Cmcm-B6O (β-B6O), which in all quantum-mechanical treatmen...